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WSSN
WSSN is the Independent station serving Boston, Massachusetts. It broadcasts on channel 69. It is one of the most successful TV stations in Boston. Syndicated programming includes Family Feud, Sailor Moon (Viz Media dub), SpongeBob SquarePants, The Loud House, Double Dare 3000, Hee Haw: Return to the Kornfield, VeggieTales on TV, Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat, The Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers, Timothy Goes to School, The Andy Griffith Show, and Michael Rosen's Book Challenge. History The station first signed on the air on September 28, 1987, operating from a bare-bones facility in Milford. It operated from a tiny 300-foot (91 m) tower originally designed for use as an airport traffic control tower. It broadcast at only 6,000 watts – the minimum transmitter power for a full-power station. All of the equipment – two tape decks, a mixer, a primitive character generator, a satellite receiver and an Emergency Broadcast System unit – was located in the basement of a McMansion. Two months later, it began broadcasting from a considerably improved broadcast facility in Bellingham. Its 952,000-watt effective radiated power gave it fairly decent coverage of the southern fringe of Greater Boston, and it had also managed to get carriage on cable throughout the market. However, the antenna was somewhat heavier than normal, and the owners feared that the tower could not handle the weight of ice buildup should winter weather hit the area. As a result, the station was forced to go off the air in November while a new site was found. In January 1989, WSSN returned to the air from another transmitter in Bellingham, this time located off Depot Street (this site is now a Best Buy distribution center), with considerably reduced power (at 501,000 watts). By June, the owners, Kokusai Recreation (a Japanese golf course and resort operator), were going through bankruptcy, which complicated their efforts to keep the station going. Benefactors ended up having to pay the syndication distributors, the landlords and other creditors, and the employees' paychecks started to bounce. The station was put on the market, but there were no credible buyers. The station abruptly went dark at 1:13 p.m. on September 19, 1989, after an airing of the film Rocky had finished. Winchford Communications bought WSSN in December 1989, and returned channel 69 to the air as a independent station showing syndicated programming, educational films, and movies. Newscasts Current Staff (Year Joined in Parenthesis) Jane Smith - News Director *Jonas Andersons - anchor; weekday mornings "Vision69 NewsBeat: Morning Edition" (2015) *Michael Jones - anchor; weeknights at 6 and 10 (2015) *Jamie Smith - anchor; weeknights at 6 and 10 (2015) *Michelle Sanders - anchor; weekend evenings (2015) NewsBeat SuperWeather Center Meteorologists *Mark Jones - meteorologist; weekday mornings "Vision69 NewsBeat: Morning Edition" (2015) *Fred Jackson - chief meteorologist (AMS Seal of Approval); weeknights at 6 and 10 (2015) *Kalvakuntla World Peace (government name Andrew Louis Stevens) - meteorologist; weekend evenings (2015) Sports Team *Victor "El Maniaco" Martinez (b. Ecuador) - sports director; weeknights at 6 and 10 (1994) (formerly of WUVT) *Jonas Goyette - sports reporter; weekend evenings (2003) Current On-Air Reporters *Mickey Stevens - general assignment reporter (1999) *Surad Chand (b. India) - general assignment reporter (2015) (formerly of Doordarshan) *Bunny Muggeridge - general assignment reporter (2012) *Aidan Traherne (b. UK) - general assignment reporter (1995) (formerly of ITN) *Marcus Jones - general assignment reporter (2012) *Qiangguo Sima Qian - general assignment reporter (2016) (formerly of WCHI) Category:Boston, MA Category:Channel 69 Category:Independent Stations Category:Independent stations Category:Educational Independent Category:Educational television stations Category:Locally Owned Stations Category:Television channels and stations established in 1987